Friday, June 19, 2009

The American Library Association's Booklist magazine calls Singularity, the first Sarah Armstrong mystery, one of last year's "Best Crime Novel Debuts." It's been a long wait for book two in this exciting new series. In fact, most of us will have to hang in there a bit longer, until July 21st, when Blood Lines hits stores. But now there's good news: One lucky WCI reader is about to move to the head of the line.

How? A contest, one that'll show off your knowledge of true crime. The prize: an ARC, an Advanced Review Copy, of Blood Lines, personalized and autographed by the author, WCI's own Kathryn Casey.

Praise is already pouring in for Blood Lines. Booklist calls it "a strong sequel." Library Journal says Blood Lines is "engrossing and well-written." Publishers Weekly says the second Sarah Armstrong mystery is "enjoyable," and "Casey successfully taps into celebrity obsessed culture." Enter the contest, win, and nearly a month before its pub date, you'll have your own copy!

To whet your appetite, here's a taste:

In Blood Lines, Cassidy Collins is living the dream. The latest teen singing sensation and the darling of the fan magazines, Collins has money and fame. She's escaped her humble beginnings to become a star. Everything is perfect for Collins, except for one complication, a potentially fatal one: the stalker who threatens to take her life.

Meanwhile, Faith Roberts believes her dead sister, Billie Cox, is contacting her from beyond the grave. What does Billie want Faith to know? Is she trying to tell her who pulled the trigger?

A year after tackling the most dangerous case of her career, the Texas Ranger's lone profiler, Sarah Armstrong, is back and charged with untangling two troubling cases that take her from Houston oil mansions to behind the scenes at rock concerts and the world's biggest rodeo. In the end, Sarah's forced into a battle of wits with a brilliant criminal intent on murder.

And now for our contest. Below are excerpts from ten true-crime classics. The first reader to correctly guess the authors and titles of all ten will win an autographed ARC of Blood Lines. You may list your answers in the comments to this post or by e-mailing us at womenincrimeink@yahoo.com. This contest will remain open until we have a winner. Good luck!

1) “I think that you can infer from the evidence that a fight developed in the master bedroom between Colette and the defendant. . . . You know those words—‘Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, Daddy.’ I believe those words were said, but not from fear of intruders. . . . They were said as Kimberly came to the master bedroom to find out what was going on between her mother and father.”

2) “[The boy] had a coughing fit, so I stuffed a pillow under his head. Then I turned off the lights. . . . The taping came later, after I’d tied both the women in their bedrooms. . . . Dick carried the flashlight when we went to tape [the father] and the boy. . . . I thought he was a very nice gentleman. Soft-spoken. I thought so right up until the moment I cut his throat.”

3) “Sharon looked at her and was crying and begging, ‘Please don’t kill me. Please don’t kill me. I don’t want to die. I want to live. I want to have my baby. . . . ' Susan said she looked Sharon in the eye and said, ‘Look, bitch, I don’t care about you. I don’t care if you’re going to have a baby. You had better be ready. You’re going to die, and I don’t feel anything about it.’ ”

4) “He and Danny had attended a drive-in movie, he said, and returned to Mercer House after midnight. Back at the house, [Danny] suddenly went wild . . . smashed an eighteenth-century English grandfather clock. Then . . . he grabbed one of William’s German Lugers . . . [and] aimed it directly at Williams, who was sitting behind his desk.”

5) “It was 3:00 a.m. when [she] arrived at the Chi Omega house. . . . She heard a loud thump. . . . A moment later, she heard running footsteps in the corridor above. . . . And then she saw him, a slender man, wearing a dark jacket. . . . A ‘Toboggan’ . . . was pulled down over the top half of his face. She saw him only in profile, but she could make out a sharp nose. The man was crouched over, his left hand on the doorknob. And in his right hand, incredibly, he held a club, a club that seemed to be a log.”

6) “Johnny asked, ‘Where’s the baby?’ . . . The patrolman directed him toward a closed door. . . . The room was obviously a nursery, but the pleasant aroma of baby talcum was mixed with the smell of death. . . . The blood seemed everywhere. It had coagulated on the mattress to form a grotesque halo around the baby’s head. His curly brown locks were matted and dyed a dark red. He looked so innocent and helpless, not much bigger than the stuffed animals surrounding him.”

7) “There was this man, standing there in the middle of the road. He looked like he needed help. I stopped the car, and got out. He wanted my keys. He just reached in through the window and shot my kids. . . . He shot me too.”

8) “I wasn’t fifty feet out of the driveway when my car was blocked. . . . I thought, It’s my turn to get whacked for Lufthansa. I saw this guy in a windbreaker who popped up alongside the car and jammed a gun against the side of my head. For a second, I thought it was over. Then he screamed, ‘Make one move, motherfucker, and I’ll blow you away!’ That’s when I began to relax. That’s when I knew they were cops. Only cops talk that way. If it had been wiseguys, I wouldn’t have heard a thing. I would have been dead.”

9) “Suddenly the doorbell rang. With a whoop, Robert ran to the foyer. Myra followed him. Just as the child put his hands on the knob, his grandmother felt something was wrong. . . . A strange man pushed his way in and stood in dominance. Though in her seventies, Myra's senses were sharp and her powers of observations clear. She would never forget how this intruder looked, even though her heart was rising in her throat. She first noticed his eyes . . . ‘wild eyes, like great big marbles rolling about. And glistening like they had a coat of shellac on them. . . .’ It seemed he was wearing a sorrel-colored wig, with a strip of greenish cloth dangling about his head. And in his hand, casually held as if it were nothing but a stone picked up at random from a plowed field, was a gun.”

10) “ ‘School children make nice targets,’ he threatened. ‘I think I shall wipe out a school bus some morning . . . and pick off the kiddies as they come bouncing out.’ ”

Thanks, readers, for your entries. The contest is still officially open. So far, Sibby and Anonymous 11:55, are in the lead.

Sibby, you are one title away from winning!

Anon 11:55, you have 8 out of 10 correct guesses.

You are allowed to resubmit until we have a winner. Review your guesses and search for those you are least sure of. Another hint: The books from which the excerpts were extracted are considered "classics" in the genre.

Honorable Mentions go to these readers who correctly guessed all ten (after the two available ARCs were already claimed by our winners):

Brittney Jensen

&

Sibby

Congratulations, everyone! And thanks for participating. We know the contest was not easy. One of the contestants said, “You sure gave my brain a workout!” Maybe we’ll offer another “workout” next season, for one of our fall release books.

Sigrid and Deb, please e-mail Kathryn Casey at kc@kathryncasey.com with mailing addresses and inscription instructions for your signed copies of BLOOD LINES.